A Shining Star

In the time of Covid, time itself seems to be moving in clods and clunks.  Most days go by pretty fast.  But there are others that make me realize how long I have been hiding out in my house.  The other day, I missed an old gardener friend and had not heard from her for several many months.  I realized then that the lockdowns and sheltering in place have changed everyone's perspective on time.

When our gardener meeting minutes came out I noticed she had dropped from several committees. I thought the worst but reminded myself that it had to be something normal. I tried to call but did not get her, so emailed. She responded right away and wrote that she was fine and that she owed my husband and me dinner. I think we paid for her dinner over a year ago on our way to a meeting...so long ago.  I had forgotten, but she remembered.  She then went on to say that she has dropped out of the gardening group but is volunteering one day a week at the local library.  She said that she had just turned 95 and decided she needed to slow down.

For some insight, this woman is a volunteer master.  There is nowhere in the county that she has not donated her precious time.  She has won awards from the county for her time donated.  BUT when she explained that she had just turned 95, I was a bit surprised.  It seemed just a few years ago she was in her 80s when we used to work booths, etc. together. She never seemed that old to me.  Wow.  Time seems to have flown while I was sheltering and nervously eating chocolate.

She has been a widow for almost two decades.  Her children are all doctors and live in the city while another lives somewhere in Germany!  This gene pool should be duplicated!

I am always envious of those who fit in everywhere and are not intimidated by some new task or the pace of activity, and she is a shining example.

I am Timid Theresa and always move in slowly with trepidation.  I am sure I will disappoint or I will not like the endeavor.

Do you have friends that are 'stars'?  Are you a 'star'?  (Having read Bloggers I follow for years, I find lots of shining stars.)

I Will Send You Next Door

The world has been topsy turvy with such odd weather.  We got just a taste of that.  I will send you to my other blog for a trip in the icy woods, since I have nothing to write here.  (Do you see the finch?)

A Litany of Activities and the Answer to Your Question on the Prior Post

The last time I saw my 13-year-old ( or is she still 12?) granddaughter was just before Christmas.  She looked at me sideways and asked "What do you do all day, Neena (my pet name)?"   The image of what she thought about an old lady who has no job, lives remotely in the country, and does not look at her cell phone every ten minutes flashed before me.  I am sure she thought I sat all day and stared out at the window.

Actually, I do a lot of that staring out the window in feeding and counting the birds that come to my feeders.

I also read quite a bit.  Reading three books right now:  Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age by Sanjay Gupta; The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz  by Erik Larson; and Best American Short Stories 2020 (The Best American Series ®) edited by

Curtis Sittenfeld.  I am going through a bit of an addiction to Winston Churchill because I am also taking the Great Course of him on my computer.  You study history long enough and you realize that pure damn luck has a lot to do with where you are at any time and that smart leaders are very complicated.

I watch a lot of British TV in the evenings and science fiction/space shows.  Hubby and I are binge-watching the various series of Star Trek each night.

I do sit and look at my phone every 10 minutes or so to see if any of the three places where I have registered for the COVID shot have contacted me to face the dragon on their website and pick a time.  Nothing...except 'we have no vaccines at this time' or 'working on our site and we will be available in the near future.'

I try to do my exercises 3 to 4 times weekly, but my continued chronic cough has interrupted my sleep for over a year and thus my energies are not as high as I would like.  My allergist is treating me with various versions of tranquilizers which seem to be making me edgier rather than calmer and do not seem to impact this cough which emerges every hour to an hour and a half during the day and two or three times at night.  My daughter is angry that I am not more pro-active in seeking a solution, but my insurance company is not as liberal as hers and my medical network is much smaller.

My day is also busy with cooking for someone with allergies and ordering food mostly remotely which takes up a LOT of time and creativity.

As my blog title says:  I am taking it ONE DAY AT A TIME.

And, to answer your question, the series of photos in the prior post came about because a pair of Canada geese have been sitting on the osprey nest.  They did successfully raise a small flock a few years ago at this nest and drove away the osprey couple for whom we built the nest.  Osprey arrive to mate about 2 weeks later than our local geese do and while they have talons and a sharp beak they are no match for the heavy geese with their long strong necks.  This year we want the nest available for our Osprey as their nesting sites are more selective.  The metal deterrent is something we used last year and then took it down when we saw Osprey in the area.  Our young friend who stands over six feet did the setup and we will now wait for the Osprey season.

Having Friends in High Places

Tabor's world continues to turn and it seems to be moving fast enough to stay ahead of the Virus.  Hubby has gotten his first shot and that is a relief to me.  My daughter and her family all had the virus for a long weekend in January.  They got tested and were found positive.  They did not suffer terribly.  Mostly fatigue and aches.  Now I just worry about my son and his wife.  Both have some health issues, so I keep praying for more vaccines.  I have not yet been scheduled for any shots, although I have called and registered everywhere in the area; so I am hanging out mostly indoors.

I have a "brief" photo montage below that cautions you about helping friends.  Let me know if you have figured it out and I will explain in the next post.

Now off to read your posts.

Transitions

Well, yesterday, an Official (our new incoming President) held a memorial for the 400,000 who had died in this pandemic.  He did not pretend it was a hoax of his party's making.  He did not pretend it was just a little cold-type-flu that impacted only the weak and unChristian.  He took the route of science and facts and calmly honored those who are no longer with us.  Dr. Gupta (CNN's talking head doctor) said the flu was hard to really understand for Americans because it was so hidden for most.  We are all sheltering in place.

There have been funerals in parking lots, funeral parlors have been overbooked and turned away customers.  Los Angeles reduced its air quality regulations because so many people were being cremated!

AND if this was a hoax, it was a good one, fooling everyone across the globe!

Both hubby and I cried as the Spirituals were sung while all of our new officials stood quietly.  The Washington Mall and reflecting pool with its thousands of American flags waving in the gentle winter breeze were the perfect backdrop as the sun set.  Someone had gotten the entire Mall lit with soft lights as well!  

If you listened carefully, that warm breeze across the continent was a global sigh of relief that a gentle, smart, generous, purposed adult had taken the reigns of our nation.  A person who was surrounded by loving family and staff and not people who wanted a piece of the pie.  Of course, there will be more storms before the calm, but I have faith in our Democracy.

Yesterday

Yesterday, I made Krupuk and ate too much before I realized it...you know I was watching TV and not monitoring my snack food intake.  This really plays fast and loose with any calorie count you "maintain".  It does not help when you are watching Breaking News.

Yesterday, a young friend of mine gave birth to a baby girl (their second) in a Washington D.C. hospital.  It went uneventfully and peacefully.  Life does go on.

Yesterday, my doctor responded to my complaint about a medication I am taking which has no effect on my chronic cough.  (The first week we tried one tablet twice a day and then three weeks later since there was little effect two tablets twice a day, and then last week, after my visit telling him the cough still happened 8 to ten times throughout the day and night, he upped it to three tablets twice a day.)  After my call yesterday he upped it to three tablets three times a day(!)...after which I will no longer comply if it does not work over the next ten days.

Yesterday, I remembered visiting the Capital on a tour with my parents one spring many years ago.  We were strictly required to stay in lines and areas and be quiet when in the Rotunda.

Yesterday, I wept and raged and sighed and was sorely embarrassed for our country.  I felt for those few police officers who were tasked with protecting the Capital building.  During the Black Lives Matter protest, the President called out the National Guard in full force and riot gear.  The President called those protesting at the Black Lives Matter Movement "criminals."  Yesterday he said he "loved" the "protestors" that violently broke into the Capital building.  

Some Congressmen/women are calling for enacting the 25th Amendment.  My only response is "What the hell took you so long?"

I live Next Door to Martha Stewart

Drip, drip, drip.

I have blogged (belabored) several times on the economics of my current neighborhood, and this over-blogging of the subject, perhaps, was because I grew up poor.  The kind of poor where there is food on the table but not enough to fill a growing teen's stomach..especially when there were five children at that table.  The kind of poor that when you outgrew last year's winter ice skates, there was not enough money for a new pair. The kind of poor where you did not get the gifts you hoped for Christmas, so you did not make any wishes. My parents were loving but somewhat distant as life pulled them here and there while trying to make enough money to feed, clothe, and shelter a family of seven.  We were never the "homeless" poor although my father was on unemployment for one year.  I was in sixth grade the first time I ate in a restaurant, and that was with a friend and her parents.  Our form of eating out was the 15 cent hamburgers at MacDonald's when I was a teenager. I never knew how difficult it was for them to make ends meet, as they were good to shelter us from the tensions of money problems and we did not live in a community where there were wealthy that flaunted their fortune.  We never felt we were poor...just a farm family.  I am sure this is what makes me side with the liberals, as I know the hard-working poor.

Education was important and we all worked hard to make good grades.  Besides, that was the only way we made money...by getting "A's."  We did not get an allowance.  I did have the fortune to go onto a small state school where I got a Bachelors's Degree.  Then after saving carefully at my first job I was able to go on to get a Master's Degree.  I met an educated man at graduate school and he was also a good and honest man and we married and raised our family on a solid middle-class income with a small nest egg from living 9 years overseas.  To me that is rich.

So living in my current middle-class house, which we designed and had built, is a dream.  As I have written before, the neighborhood is mostly upper-middle-class with at least three millionaires in the larger houses and everyone else solid middle class.

I have written about the lovely large house to our left and our good neighbors with whom we went out to dinner at least twice a year and talked on the phone as needs arose.  They finally downsized and now have a small apartment in the Capital city and a small Condo in Florida. Their huge house sold in two days!  The new owner(s) moved in over the weeks of December.  Three moving vans illustrated that the new owner(s) had plenty of furniture to fill up the place.  This was followed the week before Christmas by a large tree to decorate.  I do not spy on them, but as I did dishes there is a clear view between the bare winter trees and I easily saw the day-long activity.  

I called my old neighbor and she said that the new owner was a single elderly woman.  "Single elderly?" I said to my  former neighbor, "She must be very wealthy to live in a huge house like that by herself."  The response was "Oh, she has lots of money!"  This from neighbors who themselves have "lots of money."

I will try to get to the end of this ramble here about money, neighborhoods, and neighbors.  This week my husband harvested the last of the carrots from the food pantry garden...pounds of carrots and nowhere to deliver with a closed food pantry due to Covid and holidays.  The pantry was not to open until the second week of January.  So after calling around he found a good place for distribution but saved two batches for our neighbors on each side.  Therefore we(he) got to meet the "elderly lady" with a hospitality basket of carrots and a welcome card.  She was very gracious and surprised that we were the first to drop by.  I think she thinks our neighborhood is neighborly...

She told my husband she had sold her 600-acre farm to the north and hosted a garden show on PBS for years...so she likes to garden and she must be VERY good to be on PBS. As hubby and she chatted, they realized they were the exact same age spared by a few months.  Her husband passed a few years ago.  So when hubby came back with a name, this nosy old bitch (me) had to Google her and I found that she is listed as a Philanthropist, rather than a TV host.  She has donated a million dollars to our county hospital and hundreds of thousands to other venues in this county.  We are so lucky to have people like her.  She is beautiful (maybe a face lift) but a lovely smile and warm face.

This morning my husband noticed that "Martha" was out in her front yard planting a tree!  She was digging a hole with a shovel and then she brought in bigger tools.

I told you she was Martha...she drives that bobcat!  You can just see her on her knees doing something with the vehicle.